Cold Weather Concreting

To reduce the risk of concrete damage in cold weather, use the COMMAND Center maturity monitoring system to estimate when in-place concrete has achieved sufficient strength.

Placing concrete in cold weather can be a challenge. The rate at which concrete gains strength decreases in cold weather and can be stunted if it freezes. In cold weather, construction teams should take extra precautions to ensure concrete has reached sufficient strength before applying any loads, such as traffic, pedestrians, or additional construction equipment. Loading early-age concrete too soon can damage it.

Without maturity, determining when concrete has gained enough strength in cold weather can be difficult. Contractors will often rely on mix designs that have previously performed well in cold weather, but even slight changes in available materials can eliminate or reduce the effectiveness of this method.

Instead, contractors can use maturity monitoring to reliably estimate their in-place concrete’s strength based on measured data at the job site. By embedding COMMAND Center sensors in the concrete after placement, concrete strength can be estimated from the internal temperature history of the actual project’s concrete.

Construction teams can also use HIPERAV—free software provided by the Federal Highway Administration—to predict early-age strength gain and stress development in concrete placed during cold weather. Construction teams can use maturity data as inputs to increase the accuracy of HIPERPAV predictions.

Even when specifications don’t require maturity in cold weather, many contractors choose to implement COMMAND Center maturity monitoring to improve their concrete quality control and construction operations. As a result, they can decrease project costs and reduce the risk of necessary repairs—and avoiding repairs means a much greater chance of completing a job on time.